A swimming success

Victory is mine. Parker can swim.
At the beginning of the summer, I told my wife that I would have him swimming by the end of the summer. And we both stuck to it and accomplished our goal, meaning he can start having dinner again.
Ha! Little parenting humor there! Moving on...
Having a pool in our backyard is a tremendous amount of fun. It is also tremendously terrifying. When we bought the house, the pool was just sitting there, a 20,000-gallon rectangular pond in my backyard. When Allie was about two, we were walking around the side of the pool, and, despite the fact that I was holding her hand, she was doing one of those staggering, leaning walks that two-year olds do, and stepped right off the edge into the pool. We were at the shallow end, and I immediately pulled her out, but the split second shot of her looking up at me from under the water terrifies me to this day. The next day, my wife and I were shopping for fences to put around the pool deck.
Despite the comfort of the fence around the pool, we still had very strict rules on pool use. They can only go out there with adults, no running, keep the jet ski under 40 mph, etc.
Allie is a very good swimmer which is a comforting fact. However, at the beginning of the summer, Parker was, well, not. He wore a little life vest when he swam, which we referred to as his “bubble” for some reason. One thing that always disturbed me about “bubbles” and the like is that it gives the kids the false confidence they can swim. The bubble is a lot of fun, though, because he can just paddle around the pool, floating here and there. However, it’s not swimming, and it was key that we get him in fish mode.
In order to wean him off the bubble, I started with a rule: He could not go in the deep end unless he had his bubble on. He could touch at the shallow end, so he would sometimes opt to go without the bubble and just hang in the shallow end. But the allure of the deep blue deep end was great, and he would yearn to travel out there where his sister was swimming around. In order to encourage him to swim, I would stand down at the deep end and say, “WHAT’S THE MATTER, LITTLE BABY – CAN’T SWIM!?!?! BOO-HOO, BABY!!!” And then Allie and I would point and laugh.
Ha! A little more parenting humor there! (I cannot vouch for whether or not Big Sister may have mocked just a smidge.)
So when Parker said he wanted to swim to the deep end, I told him he had to start swimming on his own before he could go. We started in the shallow end, where I would stand about five feet away, and he would stand on the steps. He would launch himself toward me, flailing his arms and legs, slowly sinking underwater. He would stand up, spewing water, hacking and snorting as he emerged. Not exactly a stellar beginning. We kept trying and he eventually got to where he would go for about 8-10 feet, although he always concluded with sinking to the bottom at the end. Fine at the shallow end. Not so fine for someone wanting to go to the deep end.
When Allie learned to swim, there was a point when it just sort of clicked. All at once, everything fell into place for her, and she started gliding across the water. I kept waiting for that moment with the Parker. Then, one day, he was standing on the steps and he said, “Daddy, watch this!” I was about 10 feet from him, expecting him to have that click-on moment. Instead, what he did is, well, odd. He dove underwater, belly almost touching the bottom, and swam, kicking his feet together like a dolphin all the way to me, and popped out of the water still holding his breath. Sure that it was an accident, I put him back on the steps and told him to do it again. Again, down underwater, and he just dolphined on over to me, not coming up for air until he reached me. Perhaps this is normal, but it sure seems odd to me that he could swim UNDER the water, but not ON TOP of the water.
We kept working on the above water swimming, but every time he would start to sink, he would just go into Flipper mode and go torpedoing underwater. Again, all well and good when you can stand up when you get done.
So the other day, he asked if I could carry him on my back into the deep end. We swam to the other side, and he grabbed onto the wall. Just to see what happened, I pushed back way from the wall and told Parker to swim to me. CLICK. He pushed off and starting furiously paddling toward me, his head high above water. I kept swimming backwards, and he kept swimming toward me, until before he knew it we were in the shallow end. The next step was to master jumping into the deep end and swimming. I told him to jump and swim to me, as I treaded water in the deep end. “Will I sink?” he asked me.
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” I told him.
He jumped and, with a few quick strokes, was on top of the water, swimming furiously toward me. He could swim.
While I will never feel comfortable letting children swim without an adult present, it’s nice to know that both of them are at the level where they can hold their own. Next summer, Parker will continue to improve, and the pool will be more and more fun. For one thing, he’ll now be able to take the jet ski to the deep end.